Foreign Exchange raises critical questions around the scientific and educational remit of an ethnographic museum in Germany and highlights its unspoken relationship to global trade. This publication investigates the historical accumulation and commodification of artefacts and the representation of the human body as seen on ethnographic photographs. New material developed out of artistic research in the Weltkulturen Labor is presented together with unpublished scientific photography. Extended conversations between internationally renowned anthropologists, art historians, curators and artists offer new connections between past and present. Foreign Exchange responds to current interest in the remediation of ethnographic collections, colonial history, historical archives, and interdisciplinary curatorial practice.
Contributing authors and artists: Peggy Buth, Minerva Cuevas, Tom McCarthy, Gabriel Gbadamosi, David Lau, David Weber-Krebs, Luke Willis-Thompson.
